How Genetically Modified Alfalfa Affects You - Please Distribute

Stop GM Alfalfa bumper stickers available from WWA Activism

 

Alfalfa is a staple livestock feed. It is collected and made into bales of hay, which are fed to animals.

What goes into an animal's body goes into our bodies if we eat meat or other animal products like cheese, milk, yogurt, chocolate, eggs, or honey. If we are feeding animals toxic food, it will eventually make its way to us.

So:

alfalfa ---> hay for animal feed ---> you eat meat or animal products ---> you are exposed to genetically modified material

Currently, Canada's alfalfa crop is natural (non-genetically modified). It is one of our precious national crops. It's how we feed our animals. Ninety-three percent of it is unsprayed - no chemical herbicides or pesticides.

Monsanto and the other GMO corporations would like to change that. They would like to make sprayed, genetically-modified alfalfa a much larger percentage of the Canadian alfalfa crop, and the initial foot in the door is planned for Ontario and Quebec.

Genes that do not naturally occur in alfalfa have been implanted in GM alfalfa seeds by scientists so the alfalfa plants will be able to withstand massive doses of chemical herbicide.

With a feral, perennial (grows year-after-year) crop like alfalfa that pollinates widely, including by wind and insects, cross-contamination by GM alfalfa is certain.

Already, GM crops have contaminated much of the non-GM food supply, particularly foods with corn, soybean, canola, or beet sugar ingredients. The organic label, which prohibits genetically modified material, cannot be guaranteed GM-free.

The company selling the seeds, Wisconsin-based Forage Genetics, is choosing Ontario and Quebec for the introduction of GM alfalfa because it has already been rejected outright by Western Canadian farmers.

There is no benefit to introducing genetically modified alfalfa in Canada, financially or health-wise.

The results of an unprecedented animal feeding trial found in 2012 that GM corn and glyphosate (the main ingredient in Monsanto's chemical herbicide Roundup) cause much higher incidences of tumours, organ damage, and premature death in lab rats.

This means, if genetically modified alfalfa is introduced and contaminates the natural crop, we will be feeding our animals something that could cause major health problems. When we eat those animals or products from those animals, this is passed on to us.

If you eat meat, dairy, eggs, honey, or other animal products, this affects you.

Even if you don't, it affects you.

Alfalfa is a natural fertilizer. It is used widely in organic agriculture. If GM alfalfa contaminates the alfalfa crop in Canada, that means genetically modified plant material is going to make its way into the soil as fertilizer...and stay there.

This will make it effectively impossible to call any food certified organic. If the soil isn't organic, the food grown in that soil will not be organic.